Thermal, combined-cycle, hydro, nuclear, solar PV, wind, battery storage, diesel gensets, cogeneration, and microgrids — how every major generation technology actually works, and what each one asks of the grid it feeds.
Module 1 established the grid as one continuously balanced machine; this module opens up the generation side of that machine plant by plant — the Rankine and Brayton cycles behind thermal and combined-cycle plants, the impoundment/run-of-river/pumped-storage distinctions in hydro, the PWR/BWR split in nuclear, and the power-electronics-first architecture that makes solar PV, wind, and battery storage fundamentally different from every synchronous-machine technology that came before them.
By the end of this module you should be able to explain why a combined-cycle plant reaches roughly double a simple-cycle turbine's efficiency, why inverter-based resources like solar and battery storage contribute no inertia to the grid, and how diesel gensets, CHP, and microgrids fit together as the dispatchable, resilience-oriented end of the generation spectrum — groundwork Module 11 and Module 17 both build on directly.